172 students from 41 schools entered the competition. Finalists included a team from Cornell with a proposal for using artificial intelligence to increase hospital billing to insurance, as well as a hospital-at-home option tailored to rural settings; a team from San Diego State University with a proposal on mobile maternal health vans; and a team from Johns Hopkins University with a plan incentivizing rural hospital agglomeration into a hub-and-spoke model. Congratulations to the team of Haasini Peddikuppa, Shriya Mehta, and Saumya Sia Narang from Cornell for winning the competition!
Slide decks for the three finalist teams can be found here, here, and here.
The 2025 Prompt
This case challenged teams of undergraduate students to assume the role of state policymakers and re-envision how rural healthcare is provided in Louisiana. The impetus for this is the challenges presented by changes to Medicaid eligibility rules, as well as the opportunity presented by the Rural Health Transformation Program in the July 2025 reconciliation bill. It is anticipated that this measure will provide Louisiana with $220 million per year in each of the next five years. Students should detail their plan for spending 1/3rd of this money in one of three investment tracks: infrastructure modernization, workforce expansion, or care delivery innovation. A good policy will leverage existing state infrastructure as appropriate and include detailed breakdowns of the costs of the policy package.